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When I come to creating a design I always seem to draw a blank. I play around in dreamweaver with some tables and see what I can come up with. How do you go about creating a site, do you create layouts in any other apps ?. I don't like a lot of stuff i come up with but I don't know weahter it is just me or that fact that they are bad.Designs usally look bad at the start maybe I should just stick with and and keep changing it untill i get what I get. If I don't like the way it is looking continue making it and improve it instead of keep dumping stuff and starting again what you lot think ? Any tips on how to improve? Should I become better at my graphic skills ? I have people see my work and they like it but I don't know weather they are just saying that or not just to make me happy. My current URL is http://www.markshiel.com this was made for the purpuse of learning flash It was my first flash site , could of been better but iI was busy with other things didn't have much time to work on it.

IMO Graphics make the site. If you have professional looking graphics your site will look professional, if you don't, it won't.

When designing a site I will often just think about how I want it to look, menu on top, or on left. What colors? What font? Sometimes I'll sketch out my designs very loosely. But then I just go into photoshop and make the graphics first. Often while making said graphics I'll change things around as I see the site start coming together. But then I make the layout around the graphics and fill in the content.